“Did you bring it?” I asked, climbing to my feet and approaching the prison wall. My impatient gaze frisked Jonah for the Book of Blackwell as I gripped the bars.
The magic coating them sizzled my flesh. I yanked them back, the bars eating another layer from my skin.
“Ah shit,” I hissed out, then dug my teeth into my lip. I glanced at my palms, blisters already forming.
“It’s only a poisonous herb. Man up,” Jonah said, fanning my family book in front of him. “It was right where you said it was.” He passed the book through the bars to me. “There was something else inside your cabin I wasn’t expecting.”
My body tensed in a hopeful grip. “Fallon? Did you see her? Is she okay?”
Jonah’s face turned somber, and he averted his eyes. “She’ll be fine.”
I fell back against the wall and collapsed to the floor.
For hours, I’d depleted all magic inside me, waited for it to restore, and used it up again to get back to her. My legs couldn’t bend at the knee. My head couldn’t lift on its own. I was surprised I could stand at all once Jonah arrived, but now my body was being reminded.
“Don’t lie to me. I know her as I know myself. I’m afraid of what she might do if she finds out the truth. At least death will take me, but her? I know her, Jonah. She’ll do something stupid and desperate as I did.” I looked down at the book in my hands, wishing they were holding Fallon instead. “I thought I had one more day with her.”
“She wanted me to tell you that you’re a bitch-bitch,” Jonah muttered.
My head fell back against the wall, a small laugh pushed through my misery. “A bitch-bitch?” I shook my head, knowing Fallon rarely cursed. If she was cursing, she was either angry, frustrated, or utterly helpless. “You have to be a keeper to her as you were to me. She’s a Blackwell, Jonah. She’s the one I committed myself to, so you have no choice but to protect her now.” I slid my gaze to Jonah, who was crouching down to level with my eyes, the hexed bars between us. “If you don’t … my death will take us both, I know it. Then all this will be for nothing.”
“Are you ready to die?”
I shook my head. “No.” And the word shook the thing in my chest. There was not another stable breath afterward as they were all broken now. Each one of them. All I could do was hang my head, no longer having the energy to try and lift it. I cut my eyes to Jonah with emotion bottling in my throat. I couldn’t look him in the eye, so my gaze rested on the ring on his finger that was hanging off his knee. “I thought I was, but I’m not ready to die. I want to live. But only if it means living with her.” I sucked in a shaky breath, used all my strength to keep my body upright. “When will she come see me?”
“She’s not.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “She’s not coming,” I repeated, but the words were not registering.
“No, she says if you want to see her, you’ll have to go to her.”
“Why is she so fucking stubborn?” My head bobbed, no will to yell. “And she knows I’m locked in here? I do all this for her, and she can’t say goodbye?” Jonah didn’t respond. It went silent. My fingers dug into the Book of Blackwell. All the things I should have said swirled in my mind. “I didn’t even tell her—” I stopped there, pinched my eyes shut.
“Then I guess your soul will have to live with—” he paused and sucked in a breath. “Look, Julian. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you the way I should have. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for your family.”
“Stop. You did good. You did everything in you power. None of this is your fault. I would have fought against you every step of the way on this.”
“I know. But I still wanted to tell you that it was a wild ride. You definitely kept me on my toes. Without another Blackwell, I don’t know what this means for the St. Christopher’s. I don’t want to end up like Ocean.” He laughed a nervous laugh.
I side-eyed him. “Live your life for you for once. Find a girl.”
“A girl in this town?” He sighed, patted his knees before standing. “You have three more days, Julian Jai. At the next end of watch, I’ll make a visit so we can say our goodbyes. Read your family book, find reprieve for your soul.” He hung back for a few more beats, unsaid words hanging in the air between us.
Then his footfalls echoed inside the tunnels, and I watched his boots as he walked away, promising myself to inform Jonah of Stone Danvers, and where he could find him, before I would be burned. Without me, the coven would need Stone. That was, if he was still alive.
I’d been tortured before—numerous times—but nothing had prepared me for what I’d been experiencing these past four days. When I was at the academy, I’d read about a man who lost his arm at sea. It had tangled with the pot warp while lobstering, cutting off blood circulation for far too long. His arm had to be amputated. Years had gone by without his arm, and still, he felt the presence of the missing limb. He could even feel pain in the arm that was no longer there. The Phantom Limb Phenomenon, another unexplainable mystery.
And now I understood what it felt like to feel something that was no longer here. The sensations my body remembered, the pain it now endured even though parts of me were missing. Perhaps they were missing before her too. And the phantom of her touch would always be there, haunting my soul.
I had to force my eyes to stay open to read. The pages flipped between my fingers as I spent my last days losing myself inside the Book of Blackwell.
I read about the journey from their old home. The five Heathens were once men the coven respected, loved, looked up to. Honored. The five carried their coven through bitter winters, refusing to give up or stop or quit until safety was found.
They’d sacrificed food so the others could eat. They carried those who were weak, made cots for the dead, leaving no one behind. The five had to swallow their emotions for the sake of others because it was the rest of the coven who depended on them, looked to them for strength.
I’d read, through the eyes of Horace Blackwell, and how he’d discovered the land before it had become Weeping Hollow. He’d written about the Order, and how it came to be on the year’s coldest night. He’d written about the first time he cried when the first baby of Weeping Hollow was born. Bellamy Blackwell. His son.
Woven in every page, in every line, I read of nothing but unconditional love and the lengths he’d gone for his son to protect him and the coven. I didn’t stop reading, discovering how our coven used to be, the vision I’d always imagined it should have been.
Eventually, the book’s narrative had changed from Horace to Bellamy, and Bellamy reminded me much of myself. His defiance, his loyalty, his misunderstood love for the woods. It was as if I were reading myself, and I couldn’t find the will to stop.
I became immersed in the story of Bellamy and Sirius and how their relationship unfolded. The secrecy, the unrequited acceptance by no other, but the very thing they had found in each other. My eyes, it pointed out the mistakes they have made, their folly, their desperation.
But it wasn’t until after Sirius died, and I came upon Bellamy Blackwell’s last journal entry when everything made sense. It wasn’t until then that everything clicked. I didn’t have to read the rest of the book to know what I had to do, what I needed to do, what Bellamy should have done.
The revelation hit me like a storm.
After closing the book, I sat there in a blank daze, my eyes bouncing back and forth as I tried to comprehend it all. My heart hammered inside my chest. My muscles were flexing under my skin, wanting to run and run and run. The burning need to scream lodged in all my hollow places––my lungs, my chest, my throat, my head.
I was wrong all along. Clarice Danvers was wrong. Everyone was wrong.
I had the answer, and it was here, in the Book of Blackwell the entire time. Bellamy had always known, but no one would have been able to figure it out without experiencing a love like ours for themselves—
“Julian!” My name tumbled through the tunnels, and I snapped my eyes to the sound, seeing Kioni running toward my cell. Her eyes were big and wild and scared. “Julian!” She was out of breath, clutching her side.
The Book of Blackwell fell from my lap as I jumped to my feet. A guard grabbed her by the arm, began pulling her away. “Kioni, what happened?” I shouted, every cell in my blood turning into a pulse and slamming against my skin as I waited for a reply. Please, do not let it be Fallon. “Answer me!”
“I woke up this morning, and she was gone. She’s gone, Julian! She knows. She knows about everything. I can’t find her anywhere. You have to find her,” she cried out, thrashing against the guards to break free. “Julian you have to … or she’s … to break the curse!” Her screams muffled, and panic enveloped me when another one of her pleas echoed throughout the tunnel. “HURRY … FALLON IS GOING TO DIE!”
My hands were gripping the poisonous bars, but I couldn’t feel the burn. My entire body was on fire by each one of Kioni’s blood-curdling cries.
Fallon knew, and a thunder ruptured inside me. Fallon knew everything, and a scream rolled throughout the tunnels in a deafening tidal wave.
Fallon was going to break the curse all on her own.
My chest burned, and my scream’s force took Kioni and the guard to the ground, knocked out cold. It was as if I’d gotten hit by lightning, and the lightning had come from within me—an amplified power bursting from my chest.
And it all happened so fast.
My second wind had come.
No one was safe.
My body vibrated, a fierce hum inside this silver pocket of space I’d created.
With my body locked inside this halted time, my clenched fists moved through the bars. On the inside, my body felt like a million frayed wires that had come alive, a beam of silver light twisting and turning and jumping with the most intense sensations. But on the outside, it was as if I was wearing my soul as my skin, able to pass through anything.
Taking a step forward, I passed through the bars as the tunnels still pulsed in my ear-splitting scream. I couldn’t hear it, but I felt the buzzing of it all around me, the drawn-out boom inside me.
I moved so strangely on a different wavelength than the rest of the world.
And I took off running, knowing exactly where my girl was, and what she was about to do.
I just hoped I could get to her in time.